"Your mind works slowly tonight, Mary Yellan, and I appear to talk in riddles. Did you not know that it was Jem Merlyn who informed against his brother?"
She stared at him stupidly, her brain clogged and refusing to work. She repeated the words after him like a child who learns a lesson.
"Jem Merlyn informed against his brother?"
The vicar pushed away his plate and began to set the things in order on the tray. "Why, certainly," he said; "so Mr. Bassat gave me to understand. It appears that it was the squire himself who fell in with your friend at Launceston on Christmas Eve and carried him off to North Hill, as an experiment. 'You've stolen my horse,' said he, 'and you're as big a rogue as your brother. I've the power to clap you in jail tomorrow and you wouldn't set eyes on a horse for a dozen years or more. But you can go free if you bring me proof that your brother at Jamaica Inn is the man I believe him to be.'
"Your young friend asked for time; and when the time was up he shook his head. 'No,' said he; 'you must catch him yourself if you want him. I'm damned if I'll have truck with the law.' But the squire pushed a proclamation under his nose. 'Look there, Jem,' he said, 'and see what you think of that. There's been the bloodiest wreck on Christmas Eve since the Lady of Gloucester went ashore above Padstow last winter. Now will you change your mind?' As to the rest of the story, the squire said little in my hearing — people were coming and going all the time, you must remember — but I gather your friend slipped his chain and ran for it in the night, and then came back again yesterday morning, when they thought to have seen the last of him, and went straight to the squire as he came out of church and said, as cool as you please, 'Very well, Mr. Bassat, you shall have your proof.' And that is why I remarked to you just now that Jem Merlyn had a better brain than his brother."
The vicar had cleared the table and set the tray in the corner, but he continued to stretch his legs before the fire and take his ease in the narrow high-backed chair. Mary took no account of his movements. She stared before her into space, her whole mind split, as it were, by his information, the evidence she had so fearfully and so painfully built against the man she loved collapsing into nothing like a pack of cards.
"Mr. Davey," she said slowly, "I believe I am the biggest fool that ever came out of Cornwall."
"I believe you are, Mary Yellan," said the vicar.
His dry tone, so cutting after the gentle voice she knew, was a rebuke in itself, and she accepted it with humility.
"Whatever happens," she continued, "I can face the future now, bravely and without shame."
"I am glad of that," he said.
She shook her hair back from her face and smiled for the first time since he had known her. The anxiety and the dread had gone from her at last.
"What else did Jem Merlyn say and do?" she asked.
The vicar glanced at his watch and replaced it with a sigh.
"I wish I had the time to tell you," he said, "but it is nearly eight already. The hours go by too fast for both of us. I think we have talked enough about Jem Merlyn for the present."
"Tell me one thing — was he at North Hill when you left?"
"He was. In fact, it was his last remark that hurried me home."
"What did he say to you?"
"He did not address himself to me. He announced his intention of riding over tonight to visit the blacksmith at Warleggan."
"Mr. Davey, you are playing with me now."
"I most certainly am not. Warleggan is a long trek from North Hill, but I daresay he can find his way in the dark."
"What has it to do with you if he visits the blacksmith?"
"He will show the nail he picked up in the heather, down in the field below Jamaica Inn. The nail comes from a horse's shoe; the job was carelessly done, of course. The nail was a new one, and Jem Merlyn, being a stealer of horses, knows the work of every blacksmith on the moors. 'Look here,' he said to the squire. 'I found it this morning in the field behind the inn. Now you have had your discussions and want me no more, I'll ride to Warleggan, with your leave, and throw this in Tom Jory's face as bad workmanship."
"Well, and what then?" said Mary.
"Yesterday was Sunday, was it not? And on Sunday no blacksmith plies his trade unless he has great respect for his customer. Only one traveller passed Tom Jory's smithy yesterday and begged a new nail for his lame horse, and the time was, I suppose, somewhere near seven o'clock in the evening. After which the traveller continued his journey by way of Jamaica Inn."
"How do you know this?" said Mary.
"Because the traveller was the vicar of Altarnun," he said.
Chapter 17
A silence had fallen upon the room. Although the fire burnt steady as ever, there was a chill in the air that had not been there before. Each waited for the other to speak, and Mary heard Francis Davey swallow once. At length she looked into his face and saw what she expected: the pale, steadfast eyes staring at her across the table, cold no longer, but burning in the white mask of his face like living things at last. She knew now what he would have her know, but still she said nothing; she clung to ignorance as a source of protection, playing for time as the only ally in her favour.
His eyes compelled her to speak, and she continued to warm her hands at the fire, forcing a smile. "You are pleased to be mysterious tonight, Mr. Davey."
He did not answer at once; she heard him swallow again, and then he leant forward in his chair, with an abrupt change of subject.
"You lost your confidence in me today before I came," he said. "You went to my desk and found the drawing; you were disturbed. No, I did not see you; I am no keyhole watcher; but I saw that the paper had been moved. You said to yourself, as you have said before, 'What manner of man is this vicar of Altarnun?' and when you heard my footsteps on the path you crouched in your chair there, before the fire, rather than look upon my face. Don't shrink from me, Mary Yellan; there is no longer any need for pretence between us, and we can be frank with one another, you and I."
Mary turned to him and then away again; there was a message in his eyes she feared to read. "I am very sorry I went to your desk," she said; "such an action was unforgivable, and I don't yet know how I came to it. As for the drawing, I am ignorant of such things, and whether it be good or bad I cannot say."
"Never mind if it be good or bad, the point was that it frightened you?"
"Yes, Mr. Davey, it did."
"You said to yourself again, "This man is a freak of nature, and his world is not my world.' You were right there, Mary Yellan. I live in the past, when men were not so humble as they are today. Oh, not your heroes of history in doublet and hose and narrow-pointed shoes — they were never my friends — but long ago in the beginning of time, when the rivers and the sea were one, and the old gods walked the hills."
He rose from his chair and stood before the fire, a lean black figure with white hair and eyes, and his voice was gentle now, as she had known it first.
"Were you a student, you would understand," he said, "but you are a woman, living already in the nineteenth century, and because of this my language is strange to you. Yes, I am a freak in nature and a freak in time. I do not belong here, and I was born with a grudge against the age, and a grudge against mankind. Peace is very hard to find in the nineteenth century. The silence is gone, even on the hills. I thought to find it in the Christian Church, but the dogma sickened me, and the whole foundation is built upon a fairy tale. Christ himself is a figurehead, a puppet thing created by man himself.
"However, we can talk of these things later, when the heat and turmoil of pursuit are not upon us. We have eternity before us. One thing at least, we have no traps or baggage, but can travel light, as they travelled of old."